Thursday, May 22, 2008

Amen.

I know nothing about her, her past or her future, but I'll go out on a limb and predict that whatever sins she has committed to date are trivial next to the list she will be able to produce in another 26 or 27 years. It takes years to properly piss on someone you love, to take just one example. Racking up the opportunity costs--self-inflicted damage to one's organism, a self-centered consumerist lifestyle that wittingly squanders the Earth's finite resources--can take decades to really do right. There is the issue of sloth, which becomes easier to justify as one's metabolism sags as we age: let the youngsters hold the petitions outside Safeway, let them pick up litter at the beach; I can barely get off the couch to take a leak--besides, I've paid my dues (as if my dues were anything less than infinite). And, as we get lazier, we usually gain more power and money, both of which help immeasurably in our never-ending quest to be the biggest self-serving jerks on our blocks. And of course many of us participate in the decades-long debacle known as parenting, which pretty much single-handedly fertilizes the psychoanalysis industry.

Gould, like the rest of us at her age, has only begun her career as an asshole. If one is truly interested in Ms. Gould's remorse, I suggest they catch up with her in 2035 or so. Like the rest of us, living or not, she will have quite a bit more 'splainin' to do.